Her Dirty Little Secret
by ozhawk
Summary: Maria Hill had a secret lover before the fall of SHIELD. Afterwards, things got complicated. Lots of smut, BTW. No slash.
1. The Secret

**Her Dirty Little Secret**

_The Deputy Director's Office, The Triskelion_

He was her dirty little secret. They never talked work during their trysts. She didn't have to feel guilty about pillow talk, about spilling classified secrets. They worked together at such a high level; he was one of the few people who she could have talked to about some things, but neither of them wanted to. Neither of them thought about anything but the way they could make each other feel, when they were alone.

Maria glanced up as the door to her office slid open. "You're late back," she said coolly.

"Your pardon, Deputy Director Hill," he said, with just that edge of mockery in his voice. She glared at him, blue eyes snapping.

"Sit down. Time for debriefing."

He slid the door closed. "I certainly hope to be debriefing. Debriefing _you_," he rounded the desk, plucked her out of the chair as though she weighed nothing at all and sat her on the desk. "Did you miss me?"

"No," she said, but he'd already thrust one hard-muscled thigh between her legs, and what should have been a curt denial came out a breathy moan.

"Liar," he jerked her hair free from its tight knot, fisting his hand in it as it tumbled around her shoulders, leaning in towards her. He didn't kiss her, though, and Maria let out a sobbing little gasp. "You want it, don't you? You want it _bad_," his voice was low and rough. He was still wearing his black tactical gear, he smelt of sweat and gunpowder, and Maria had never been so turned on in her life.

"Yes," she gasped, her hands coming up to claw at his thick biceps, short neat nails digging into the heavy muscle. "Yes – please!" He was too strong for her really to pull him closer; for all her training, brute force would still win out once she was in a vulnerable position like this. But a smile curved his lips as she admitted the truth and he closed the gap between their lips, kissing her roughly, thrusting his tongue hard into her mouth as he showed her what he intended to do very shortly to her body.

Maria moaned as his strong hands, so deft with a weapon, rapidly unfastened her suit, peeling it back off her shoulders and down to her waist. Her bra was dragged off next and then he was pushing her to lie back on the desk, clearing papers off it with a sweep of his arm, bending over her to suckle and bite at her nipples. Stubble scraped across her skin and she moaned again and ran her fingers into his short hair, grinding her groin against his thigh, frantic for touch. He let out a grunt and suddenly she was being flipped over onto her stomach, her suit dragged down past her hips and off completely, a thick finger sliding up inside her even as he positioned her at the edge of the desk.

"Beautiful little slut, you're so wet," he choked out, looking down at her as she lifted her ass for him, begging wordlessly. "You might give the orders out there but in here you like being roughed up, don't you?"

"Please," was all she could say, absolutely wild with need as he shoved another finger in.

"Please what?" a sharp smack on her ass made her buck up against him. She heard his belt buckle unfasten.

"Please stick that beautiful cock in and fuck me until I can't walk," she panted, and was rewarded with his low, husky laugh. She didn't need to see his face to know he'd be wearing that shit-eating grin that had pissed off every superior officer he'd ever had.

"Since you asked so nicely," oh, thank god, Maria almost whimpered as she felt the thick, flared head of his cock push against her. He was a big guy and he knew exactly what to do with what he'd been blessed with, slowly driving all the way in until his groin met her ass. She cried out as he filled her finally and arched her back, pushing herself up on her arms, trying to get him rubbing against _that_ spot.

Calloused fingertips plucked at her nipples, and she let out another whimper, feeling further moisture well between her legs. She'd been wet all morning, knowing he was due in from his mission, knowing what he'd want, what he always wanted when he got back. She always insisted that she alone handled his debriefings, considering how high-levels and sensitive his missions often were. No one questioned. No one ever questioned her authority.

No one but _him_.

"Fuck, Maria," he grunted now, "you feel fucking amazing – that's it, that's right," as she shoved herself back against his hard thrusts. He slid a big hand down, adjusting her on the desk so he could get his hand in to rub at her clit, pinching it lightly between finger and thumb before scissoring over it fast.

Little whines and keens spilled from her lips as his thrusts grew faster, their flesh slapping together with obscenely wet, slurping sounds. He slapped her ass again as she tried to move, and then with a muttered curse pulled out of her and turned her back over.

"I wanna look in your eyes as I fuck you," he muttered gruffly, hooking his arms under her knees. "Wanna see your beautiful mouth go slack as I fill you up with my come. You want it, don't you, Maria? Want me to fuck you so hard you don't even remember your own name."

"Yes," she moaned as he teased, rubbing the tip of his cock over her clit. "Oh, god, please, please let me come!"

"You'll come when I fucking well say so." He shoved deep again, bottoming out, and she squealed as she felt his balls slap against her ass. He'd jerked her hips right off the edge of the desk and she could do nothing but lean on her elbows and watch as he rammed against her. He hadn't bothered to undress and she stared, mourning the lack of skin even as she appreciated what that tight, sleeveless black shirt did for his muscles. He caught her staring and grinned.

"Good view?"

"Could be better," she arched her eyebrows at him, and he let out that dry, husky laugh that had first attracted her, first made her look at him as more than one of the Agency's premier wetworks specialists.

"Fix it then." He slowed his thrusts and leaned forward. She reached up to unfasten the harness across his chest – he'd already checked his weapons – and pull his shirt over his head. There were a few new bruises he'd obviously picked up on the mission, and she ran her fingers lightly over them. "Nothing major," he shook his head when she gave him a querying look.

"Good. Wouldn't want you out of commission."

"I'm very much in commission, sweetcakes." His shoulders were broad, chest and arms thick with muscle, the torso of a bruising fighter. Slim as she was, it was no effort for him to lift her, turn to the wall and shove her up against it. Maria wound her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs tight around his hips, digging her bare heels against his tightly muscled ass.

"Show me," she nibbled at his bottom lip, and then moaned as he lifted her a couple of inches and then _dropped_ her back down hard on his dick. "Fuck, yeah!"

"Yeah," he gritted, hips jerking hard as he set up a brutal, plunging rhythm. He was slamming right against her G-spot now, his groin chafing against her clit with every stroke, and Maria was so close to the edge. She let out a frantic cry, clawing at his back. "That's it," he snarled at her, "come _there_, _now_, say my name, Maria!"

"_Brock_," she wailed, "Brock, _please_!"

Rumlow groaned deep in his chest as he felt her internal muscles, as toned and taut as the rest of her, clamp down on his aching cock. He thrust a couple more times, enjoying the squeezing sensation, and then let go, burying himself deep and shooting his load. Maria moaned and rested her forehead on his shoulder, shivering against him.

"Fuck," he staggered back after a moment, Maria still wrapped around him like a clinging vine, and sank to sit in her office chair. "Fuck, you're so good. Shit, Maria." She looked up at him from those amazing, deep-blue eyes of hers, and he smiled, kissing her softly.

"Uhn," she said eloquently, aftershocks still rippling through her.

"Mine," Brock said softly, running his fingers through her unbound hair. "You know that, don't you Maria? You know no-one else can make you feel this way. No one ever will. You're _mine_."

_Eight months later, Avengers Tower, New York_

Maria shot upright from sleep, the scream dying on her lips. _Oh, God, not again_. She shuddered soundlessly, gathering the blanket tightly around her. She'd dreamed of _him_ again. Dreamed of the last time she'd seen him, after the _Lemuria Star_ mission, when he'd come to her office and she'd debriefed him on the mission while they were both sitting in her office chair, him still inside her.

She'd never be free of him. Never. Even though she knew now what he was, just thinking of how he'd looked at her with those dark eyes, how he'd spoken her name in his low, husky voice, made her wet between her legs.

Natasha was the one who found her, sitting in the common room, staring out the window at the city lights, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders even though the room wasn't cold. One look at her and Natasha went to the kitchen. She pressed a mug into Maria's hands and sat down opposite her.

Maria sipped. Hot tea laced with brandy. She gave Natasha a small, thankful nod.

"It was Rumlow, wasn't it?" Natasha said conversationally.

Maria jolted, almost spilling the tea. "How did you…?"

"You've not slept well since we found out he hadn't died in the Triskelion crash. Before that there was a sort of silent grief: I wondered who it was for but didn't like to ask. But now there's nightmares, aren't there? And forgive me for saying this, but you look – aroused."

Of course the Widow would notice that. She was trained to notice everything to do with sex. Maria sighed, took a sip of her tea and nodded.

"How long?" Natasha didn't look judgemental, and Maria remembered the Russian had loved men from the wrong side of that blurry dividing line between good and evil too.

"Four years," she confessed with a sigh.

"Four years? Shit, you two really were secretive," Natasha actually looked impressed. "I never heard a whisper. I'd have thought Rumlow would be the type to brag about his conquests."

Maria sighed. "I don't know. I think – he might actually have cared about me, in a twisted sort of way. Those orders we found when Skye hacked HYDRA, that said I was absolutely not to be killed, but taken alive for reprogramming…"

Natasha looked horrified. "You think Rumlow…?"

"I think maybe I was supposed to be his _reward_," Maria whispered, utterly ashamed. "Like that's all I was good for – I think they planned to mind-wipe me like they did to Barnes, give me to Brock to be his personal little sex toy… I have nightmares that I wake up in his bed and I don't _care_ what he is, how many he killed, I just want him to touch me again…" tears began to trickle down her face, and Natasha wordlessly took the cup from her hands, set it down, and leaned in to give her a hug.

"It's all right," Natasha soothed gently, "it's all going to be all right."

"No," Maria sobbed, "it won't ever be all right again."

_A HYDRA facility, New York_

"Are you ready to comply?"

A pause. "Yes, sir. I am happy to comply," Crossbones replied. Bakshi leaned in and pressed a photograph into his hands.

"We need to capture this woman. She has too much information locked in her head, we need to get her under control so we can find out what Fury was doing."

Crossbones looked down at the photograph. Blue eyes stared back at him from a pale face. "Who is she, sir?"

"Her name is Maria Hill. She works at Avengers Tower and she likes to run in Central Park in the early mornings…"

**Please don't shoot me – this particular plot bunny grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go when I wondered just why HYDRA didn't try very hard to kill Hill during CA:TWS. And because I have a not-at-all-secret passion for Rumlow, I just had to throw in the doubt at the end that maybe he's NOT a bad guy really…**

**I'm marking this complete. But there might be a second chapter somewhere in the depths of my brain, if there's enough enthusiasm for me to continue it (that's a hint, in case you didn't notice, for you to comment)!**

**EDIT I am laughing so hard right now. YOU GUYS. I can't BELIEVE you all fell for it. Everyone seems to have thought it was Clint - maybe even Cap. I guess you read into it what you want to, huh? Even though I did drop HEAPS of clues. Go back and read through again, see if you can find them all.**


	2. The Continuations

**The Continuations**

So this is how it works…

I wrote four different endings for this fic. They all begin with the happenings of Chapter 1 of **Her Dirty Little Secret**. After that, you get to pick which ending you read.

Option 1 is called **Only Mine**. It is a dark!fic and VERY BAD THINGS happen, including explicit rape, torture and… just generally very bad things. It does not end well for the good guys. Because of these very bad things, it actually breaches the Guidelines for Fanfiction dot net and consequently is only posted at Ao3 (archive of our own dot org for those of you who may not know). If you want to read it, head over there and look for me; I go by ozhawk over there as well. (And if you're a fan of mine you should check out the Soulmate Shorts and The Gambler over there, just for the pictures included in those stories ;))

Option 2 is called **The Stepford Wife**. It isn't _quite_ as dark as **Only Mine** but Bad Things still happen, including some of those nasty triggering things I mentioned above like rape, and so it is also only posted on Ao3.

Option 3, **Over My Dead Body**, is Chapter 3 of this fic (the next chapter) and features Maria Hill being a total BAMF. 'Nuff said.

Option 4, **Fury's Inside Man**, is the only true 'happy ending' for Maria and Rumlow. It is Chapter 4 of the fic on this site.

You are, of course, welcome to read as few or as many of these 'alternate endings' as you wish – and please let me know which was your favourite!

I wrote this because the world needs more Rumlow porn, IMHO. The campaign for Rumlow porn begins!


	3. Over My Dead Body

This is Option 3 of the alternative endings for the story Her Dirty Little Secret.

It features a sexual assault (though not rape) and character death.

The good guys 'win' in this ending. Maria is a BAMF.

**Over My Dead Body**

_A HYDRA facility, New York_

"Are you ready to comply?"

A pause. "Yes, sir. I am happy to comply," Crossbones replied. Bakshi leaned in and pressed a photograph into his hands.

"We need to capture this woman. She has too much information locked in her head, we need to get her under control so we can find out what Fury was doing."

Crossbones looked down at the photograph. Blue eyes stared back at him from a pale face. "Who is she, sir?"

"Her name is Maria Hill. She works at Avengers Tower and she likes to run in Central Park in the early mornings…"

Crossbones laughed. "I'm just kidding you, sir. I know who she is, all too well, of course."

"I'm glad, Rumlow, I thought for a moment there you might have been losing your marbles." Bakshi smiled at HYDRA's favourite attack dog.

"May I ask if there are plans to turn her, sir, or just drain her of everything she knows?" Rumlow's dark eyes were eager.

"Why do you ask?" Bakshi leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together thoughtfully.

"You know about my relationship with her, sir?"

"I know you were bedding her for years but she wasn't one for favouritism or pillow talk. Still, it gave you useful access to her office. Were you fond of her, Rumlow?"

"I wasn't in love with her, no, sir, but she was one hell of a fuck." Rumlow licked his scarred lips. "I – should like to assist in her interrogation. In breaking her. And – if the organisation had no use for her afterwards…"

"I'll speak to Whitehall and von Strucker, Rumlow. You've been truly dedicated to the cause, you've earned a reward." The man was one hell of a soldier, and he'd never once complained about the burns that had damaged his once-good looks. Having Crossbones _willingly_ working for HYDRA even made up for the loss of the Winter Soldier.

"I wouldn't ordinarily ask, sir, but – just once, just once to show Maria what I really wanted to do to her all that time…" Rumlow licked his lips again.

Bakshi suppressed a shudder. Crossbones was a butcher of the most brutal kind. He _enjoyed_ his work. Bakshi almost felt sorry for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s former Deputy Director.

Almost.

_Thank fuck I let Stark put that tracker in me_, was Maria's first coherent thought as she began to come round. She'd been paranoid about HYDRA somehow cracking Stark's codes and hunting her down, but in the end he'd convinced her that they'd find her anyway if they looked hard enough, and if they got to her the Avengers needed to be able to get her back. _It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you._

Well, they really had been out to get her, apparently. The last thing she'd seen was a man looming over her, the black and white skinsuit he'd been wearing fading out of the darkness as she took her early morning run. "Hail HYDRA," a low voice had murmured before a puff of mist hit her in the face and she remembered no more.

"Good; you are awake," a man's unaccented voice said close by, and she flinched as rough hands suddenly grabbed her arms and legs. Her eyes snapped open and she reacted instantly, trying to fight back, but there were four black-clad commandoes who had a grip on her, securing her limbs to a large frame with tightly buckled straps. She screamed abuse at them, fighting right up until the moment they gripped her head and a suited man wearing glasses connected some thin, sharp hooks to the inside of her eyelids.

From then on, she couldn't move without suffering acute agony. Maria had no choice but to hold as still as she could as the straps holding her to the frame were tightened, as images started to flicker and swirl on the screen in front of her and the suit started talking, telling her in a gentle voice that compliance would be rewarded.

"Fuck you," she snarled, concentrating on keeping her eyes unfocussed.

"Oh, not me, Ms Hill. _I'm_ not going to touch you. We have someone else who's earned that privilege." The suit gestured, and a man stepped into Maria's peripheral vision.

Her focus sharpened. She had just enough movement in her eyeballs to take a good look. It was the big guy in the black and white skinsuit who'd intercepted her run, crossed white lines on his chest and a grinning death's head on his face mask. He reached up and peeled off the mask, and if she could have moved, she would have flung herself backwards, because despite shiny burn marks disfiguring his once-handsome face, it was still recognisably Brock Rumlow.

"No," Maria barely recognised her own voice. Always so cool and calm, her voice was hoarse with rage as she yelled at him. "No! You fucking traitorous bastard, I'll _kill_ you for this!"

Rumlow smiled, pacing closer. "Oh, no, I don't think so, Maria. By the time we're done here, you'll be begging me for it."

"Never," she spat at him, feeling bile begin to rise in her throat as he drew a knife, holding it up so that she could see it. It glinted wickedly, brutally sharp, and then she felt cold metal at her throat as he began tracing the knife down her skin. She twitched, trying to jerk herself forward, hoping he'd nick an artery. She'd rather die than be brainwashed into being Rumlow's toy.

The knife left her throat, and a moment later Maria felt it between her breasts and realised he was cutting her clothes off. "Don't you dare fucking touch me!"

Rumlow laughed. "But you always liked it so much. Don't you remember, Maria? Don't you remember begging me to touch you, fuck you, do it harder?"

"We all make stupid mistakes sometimes," Maria gritted out, feeling the metal slide against her skin as he cut the rest of her clothes away, until she stood naked and restrained before him.

Rumlow looked momentarily infuriated, and then he sheathed the knife and moved around behind her. Maria could guess what was coming next; she clenched her teeth hard, willing herself not to respond. And sure enough his big hands curved up over her breasts, flicking expertly at her nipples, rolling them between finger and thumb as he pressed up against her back, licking and nipping at her neck.

"Get off me, you pervert," she snarled. "What, you get off on having your women tied up? Bet it's the only way you can get anyone to fuck you now you've got scars on your face, you sick fucker."

He laughed. "Oh, you'd be wrong about that. I earned these scars in dedication to the cause. They're better than a Medal of Honor in HYDRA circles." He was grinding against her ass, those clever, callused fingers doing their job. Maria bit her tongue, furious that her body apparently remembered his touch, because her nipples were peaking, tendrils of desire beginning to course through her.

"That's it," Rumlow whispered against her neck, nipping her earlobe lightly. "That's what you like, isn't it, Maria?"

"Get your filthy traitorous hands off me, Rumlow," she snapped.

"I don't think so." One of those hands wandered leisurely downwards, tracing lightly around her navel before slipping between her legs. "You wet for me yet, Maria?"

"I am going to kill you for this." She enunciated each word clearly. She'd never been so angry in her life, mostly at herself, for having been stupid enough to ever let this man touch her. Get to her. She'd actually mourned when she found out he was a traitor: apparently there was still some girlish portion of her heart that believed in true love and happily ever after. She'd just picked absolutely the wrong man to fantasise about having that happy ending with.

He laughed. "Such a fighter. You'd have been one hell of a man, Maria, but you're not a man, you're a woman, and you have an inherent weakness." One rough finger shoved suddenly inside her, and she let out a snarl of rage. "You were made to be possessed, to be dominated by a man."

In another time, another place, the familiar touch of his hand might have been arousing. But here and now, the pure, distilled rage coursing through Maria meant the burgeoning desire was snuffed out as quickly as throwing a bucket of ice over a candle flame.

"Over my dead body."

He probed harder with his fingers, frowning at her dryness.

"Rumlow, it's not working," the suited man was back. "She's showing increased pulse and blood pressure, but her vital symptoms are consistent with anger, not desire. Stop."

He let go, his face filled with anger and confusion. "You loved me," he said to Maria, almost plaintively.

"I _used_ you," she said back coldly, "much like a vibrator. Only cheaper, since I didn't have to buy batteries."

Rage suffused his face, and he drew his fist back to strike her. The suit reached to stop him, but who knew what would have happened next – if a massive explosion hadn't suddenly shaken the building.

"We're under attack!" the suit said.

"What the hell?" Rumlow moved away to a computer terminal just on the edge of Maria's vision, typed quickly. "Fuck – it's the Avengers!"

Maria smiled.

"But we scanned her for tracking devices!" the suited man looked incredulous.

"Do you _really_ think you're smarter than Tony Stark?" Maria scoffed.

Rumlow and the suit looked at each other.

"I'm leaving," the suit said after a moment. Scooped a bag off a desk and headed for the door. "And if I was you, Rumlow, I'd bug out too. Leave her alive and _maybe_ they won't come after you." The door closed behind him.

For a moment Brock looked like he was wavering.

"Run," Maria said, hoping to get his cowardice to win out. "You'll spend the rest of your miserable life looking over your shoulder watching for me coming to kill you, but at least you'll _have_ a life. For as long as you can keep running, anyway."

He glared at her for a moment before grabbing the face mask he'd discarded and running for the door.

He wasn't quick enough. The door flew inward off its hinges, destroyed by a blow no ordinary human could have delivered, and Steve's tall figure loomed in the doorway.

He hadn't even bothered to change out of his running clothes before coming after her, Maria saw. His shield was on his arm as he strode forward, catching an attempted blow from Rumlow and hurling him across the room to smash, dazed, into the far wall.

Natasha came in behind Steve, sucked in one quick breath at the sight of Maria and darted over to her, quickly and gently removing the hooks from her eyelids, slashing the straps binding her to the frame.

Steve averted his eyes from Maria's nude body, looking in disgust at the shredded scraps of her clothing on the floor. He pulled off his T-shirt and offered it. Yes, it was sweaty, but at least it would cover her, and it would be big enough to drape her like a dress.

Maria appreciated the offer. But she had something to do first. She reached down and took the gun from Natasha's thigh holster, drawing a vicious grin from the other woman. Striding across the room, uncaring of her nakedness, she clicked off the safety and levelled the weapon.

Dazed, Brock looked up at her. "Maria," he said gruffly.

She said nothing. Just pulled the trigger, one, two, three, four times. And then she turned, walked back across the room and accepted Steve's offered shirt.

"Thank you. Let's go." She pulled the shirt over her head, plucked a spare clip from Natasha's belt and held it in her left hand. "I'm done with this place."

Steve stared in awe as Maria strode out through the shattered doorway, gun at the ready. "Wow. You know, she really reminds me of someone."

Natasha grinned as Steve followed Maria. "Yes. I've heard about your weakness for badass brunettes."

_Obviously I've been trying to set Steve up with entirely the wrong kind of woman…_


	4. Fury's Inside Man

This is the fourth, and final, of the options as sequels to _**Her Dirty Little Secret**_. It's the only true 'happy ending' fic out of all of them. That said, it's not without angst along the way ;)

**Fury's Inside Man**

_A HYDRA facility, New York_

"Are you ready to comply?"

A pause. "Yes, sir. I am happy to comply," Crossbones replied. Bakshi leaned in and pressed a photograph into his hands.

"We need to capture this woman. She has too much information locked in her head, we need to get her under control so we can find out what Fury was doing."

Crossbones looked down at the photograph. Blue eyes stared back at him from a pale face. "Who is she, sir?"

"Her name is Maria Hill. She works at Avengers Tower and she likes to run in Central Park in the early mornings…"

Bakshi watched the reprogrammed soldier carefully. They never called him Rumlow, just Crossbones. Didn't want to accidentally trigger memories of his former life. The man had been incredibly hard to break, and was one of very few that occasionally regressed. The new brainwashing techniques Daniel Whitehall had created were far more effective than the old ones used on the Winter Soldier, but there was still a flaw.

Crossbones' eyelids began to flicker. "Maria," he said in a low, husky whisper. "_My_ Maria…" He didn't see the syringe Bakshi had ready. Only felt a brief pinprick at the back of his neck.

"I believe you were correct, sir," Bakshi told Whitehall. "Rumlow _did_ have an emotional connection to Commander Hill, over and above the physical affair he admitted to."

"Hmm." The former Nazi adjusted his glasses, considering the man hanging limply in the frame in front of the brainwashing machine. "Crossbones is too useful an asset to give up on because of these _lapses_ of his. I'm inclined to pursue the course you suggested. Even though Hill is no longer S.H.I.E.L.D. she does have a lot of useful information stored in her head, no doubt." Whitehall frowned. "It's hard to believe that something as foolish as _love_ can break down brainwashing."

"It is the only explanation, sir. The only subjects who've been able to break the conditioning had strong pre-existing emotional attachments."

"Very well. We'll give Crossbones what he wants. See to it, Sunil."

"Yes, sir."

_Central Park_

"Maria, _get down_!" it was Steve's yell, and she'd been working with the Avengers long enough to know that when Captain America told you to get down, you better hit the floor. She threw herself face first at the ground in mid-stride, using her hands to shield her face from the pavement, felt rather than saw something whiz past over her head, heard a loud metal clang. _Surely Steve wasn't out running with his shield – oh_. It was a manhole cover, and it was now stuck in the driver's side door of a large black van that had pulled up at the side of the path.

Maria scrabbled for the gun holstered at the small of her back – she quite liked being alive, thanks very much, and anyone running in Central Park around dawn should definitely be armed – and rolled to her side once she had it out, steadying her arm and looking for a target. Steve went past her in a blur of grey sweatpants and T-shirt, hitting the van and flipping it up on its side. She almost grinned. _That man_.

A shadow loomed between her and Steve and she levelled the gun. "Put your hands on your head. I'm nervous and I get trigger-happy when I'm nervous. Failing that, Captain America is behind you and he doesn't like it when people interrupt his run."

"Maria?" a husky voice whispered uncertainly.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. She _knew_ that voice.

A rushing roar signalled Iron Man's arrival, and Tony was suddenly clanging to the path between her and the large shadow.

"Big fucking mistake, bub," Tony's mechanically altered voice said. "Maria's one of ours." His gauntlet came up, a panel sliding open. "Say bye bye."

"Tony, wait," Maria said, scrambling to her feet. "_Wait_."

"They were here for you, Maria!" Steve had finished with the van. Two unconscious figures lay beside it. He strode forward, holding something up. "They had _your photo_."

That was… pretty shocking. Maria sucked in a gulp of breath and looked at the dark figure standing motionless under the trees. She pointed. "I think you'll want _him_ alive, though. I think that's Rumlow."

Steve's lips peeled back in a snarl as he started forward.

"Who the fuck is Rumlow?" the man in the black and gold skinsuit said. In Brock Rumlow's voice, a distinctly puzzled undertone to it.

Steve hesitated. _Who the hell is Bucky?_ reverberated in his mind, in just that confused tone.

Tony cocked his head as JARVIS threw information onto his heads-up display. A vocal analysis completed. "It _is_ Rumlow," he said.

"I'm not…"

Steve punched him in the head. Because even if he was as lost and confused as Bucky had been – and his voice sure sounded like it, Steve had to admit – Steve still owed him one for trying to kill him in a damned elevator. Not to mention that Rumlow had been the one to force the Helicarriers into the sky.

Tony scooped up the unconscious man. "I'll get this one secured. Clint and Tasha are on their way to escort you back to the Tower, Maria. NYPD are on the way, Steve, you right to deal with this?" He gestured at the damaged van and the unconscious goons beside it.

"I got it," Steve nodded. Tearing the photo of Maria into several small pieces and dropping them into a nearby drain. "You were never here," he told Maria, who nodded as she heard the distinctive sounds of two Stark-modified motorbikes approaching.

Hawkeye didn't bother to stop, just circled the scene, looking for more trouble. Natasha skidded to a halt by Maria and handed her a helmet wordlessly. Pulling it on over her hair, Maria straddled the bike behind the other woman.

Tony whooshed into the sky as the two bikes took off again, leaving Steve standing alone in the middle of Central Park. A few moments later, the sound of sirens reached him. He sighed. Well, at least the NYPD were usually good for donuts and coffee.

Maria headed up to her apartment when Natasha dropped her off in the Tower's parking garage and took the time to shower and change before asking JARVIS where Tony had put Rumlow.

"In the medical holding cell on containment level 6, Ms. Hill," JARVIS replied politely.

"Is he conscious?" _Medical_, Maria thought. Obviously there was something badly wrong with Brock, if he was denying who he actually was. She pushed away the tiny glimmer of hope. _He's a traitor_.

"No. Dr Banner is attending him."

Maria looked through her wardrobe and chose one of the power suits Pepper had advised her on choosing. She still felt naked without her S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, but she was slowly coming to accept the expensive clothes as a different kind of uniform, one that marked her as still in possession of power, even if it was less absolute than it used to be.

Down in the medical holding cell, Maria found both Clint and Natasha keeping Bruce company, Natasha inside the room and Clint outside. The holding cell could only be opened from outside so one of them had to stay out there. Clint was standing with his arms folded, watching with a grim look on his face as Banner examined Rumlow.

They'd removed him from the black and gold skinsuit, Maria saw as she looked through the observation window. Rumlow lay on the examination table, wrists and ankles shackled down. She couldn't help but flashback to when they'd had Barnes in here, after Steve and Sam brought him back. Tony had upgraded the shackles twice when Barnes ripped out of them. The ones that held Rumlow now would probably hold even Steve or Thor.

But right now, Rumlow was unconscious. Maria stared, leaning closer to the window. It was definitely Rumlow, but he looked – _different_.

"He's about two inches taller than he used to be." Clint didn't look at her, but it was obvious he was speaking to her. "And about eighty pounds heavier. Much higher muscle density. Received the same sort of enhancements as Barnes did, from the looks of things." He turned to face her finally. "I daresay he had to have them to survive."

It wasn't the bigger, heavier body that had caught Maria's eyes. It was the horrific scarring all over Rumlow's chest, shoulders, his left arm and part of the left side of his face. Shiny white burn scars, that looked deep, and probably covered thirty percent of what she could see of his body. And Bruce had him covered to the waist.

"I'm guessing Brock didn't so much as _survive_ the Triskelion as _was recovered from it_," Clint said quietly, and Maria was reminded that Brock and Clint had trained together, worked together for _years_. Clint's rage and disbelief when Natasha told him Rumlow was HYDRA had been awful to witness.

"He said he wasn't Rumlow," Maria replied. "He sounded – confused."

"I never believed he could have been HYDRA," Clint said stubbornly, almost angrily. "It just wasn't Brock. He hated that Nazi bullshit. He's _Jewish_, his grandfather survived _Auschwitz_, for God's sake!"

Maria bit her lip. She and Clint had watched every painful moment of the footage JARVIS had recovered from the Triskelion's servers, from Rumlow damn nearly taking Steve down in that lift, to his disarming Sharon Carter and forcing the Helicarrier launch, to nearly killing Sam Wilson.

"If they _did_ reprogram him, we probably won't be able to get him back," she said quietly at last. "Because it had to have been done _before_ he was enhanced. We only got Barnes back because it happened the other way around. His brain kept repairing itself. All the others who HYDRA put through their compliance brainwashing – none of them came back, no matter what we've done."

Clint met her eyes. "So you're just gonna give up on him?"

Rumlow twitched under Bruce's hands, and his eyes snapped open. He jerked upwards, wrenching at the restraints, his lips curling back in an animal snarl. Natasha had two guns out in a second, and Maria couldn't help a cry of protest.

"They're trank guns!" Clint grabbed her arm as she went to grab the door release. "ICERs. Not real bullets." He patted the guns in his own holsters. "I've got the real bullets. Just in case."

Maria stared, her hand pressed flat against the one-way glass, as Rumlow jerked and fought. "I'm going in."

"Maria…" Clint started, but she'd hit the button.

"Not _now_… oh," Natasha blinked as she saw Maria. "What, you really think _this_ is a good idea?"

_I couldn't stay away_. She didn't say the words, but she knew from the look on Natasha's face that the other woman understood. The redhead rolled her eyes and sighed, but she took a step back from the examination table, clearing Rumlow's eyeline to Maria.

He stilled. Instantly. Staring at her from fathomless dark eyes, and then those eyes she'd gazed into so many times rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.

"Jesus!" Bruce startled, grabbing for a syringe. Natasha calmly shot Rumlow with an ICER instead.

"Get out, get out, you triggered that!" Natasha shouted, putting her gun away and reaching to help Bruce. Maria backed out hastily, knowing that if Rumlow's enhancement was indeed similar to Barnes', the ICER would wear off in under two minutes.

In the observation room, she found herself clinging onto Clint, both hands wrapped around one of his thick biceps. He didn't move other than to use his free hand to pat gently at her fingers, steadying her.

"So it _was_ you," Clint murmured, almost to himself, though Maria heard him.

"What?"

"The guys used to tease Brock that he never bothered picking up girls when we hit the bars after missions. Girls used to throw themselves at him, too; he's pretty good-looking, I'm straight and I can recognise that," Clint gave her a sideways grin. "And he was even less interested in men. I always thought he had a girl somewhere he was head over heels for."

Maria actually found herself blushing. "It wasn't like that."

"Tash told me about your fuck-buddy arrangement with him, yeah. I'm just sayin' I think it might well have been more from his side."

Maria said nothing, but Clint saw the way her eyes slid back to Brock, saw the yearning there.

_You fucking idiot, Maria. If you'd said something to him long ago, the two of you might have been properly close; close enough for you to have NOTICED when HYDRA took my friend and turned him into a puppet._ He didn't say it aloud. It was quite clear to the sharp-eyed marksman that Maria was already beating herself up for exactly the same thing.

Brock was coming around again, and this time Bruce was ready with the mild sedative; enough to keep him calm but conscious. Bruce had to use one of the 'Steve' needles to get through Rumlow's skin, they saw; further proof, if any had been necessary, that he'd been enhanced.

"Where am I?" Rumlow asked in his low rasp, staring at Bruce. Natasha, guns out again, was standing behind him, where he couldn't see her.

"In a medical facility. How are you feeling?" Bruce said, keeping his voice soft and calming.

"Okay." There was a long pause. "Who are you?"

"My name's Bruce. I'm looking after you."

"Is something wrong with me?"

Bruce hesitated, then shrugged mentally. _What the hell, they had nothing to lose_. Everyone they'd tried to tell that they'd been brainwashed, the subjects had refused to believe it.

"You hit your head. Can you tell me your name?"

Another, even larger pause. "Crossbones."

Maria felt the shock pass through Clint. That name had come up several times lately attached to HYDRA operations; Crossbones was their new strike weapon, the replacement for the Winter Soldier, just as brutal and lethal as his predecessor had been.

"That sounds like a nickname. What about your real name?"

Rumlow didn't answer, only furrowed his brow.

"What about the last thing you remember?" Bruce pressed gently. "Where did you expect to be when you woke up?"

He didn't resist answering the questions, though he didn't seem to have clear answers either. After a few moments of no resistance, Natasha sheathed her guns and moved around to join Bruce. Rumlow showed no sign of distress, only curiosity, and began to answer Natasha's more probing questions as best he could.

"What are we going to do?" Maria asked in despair as she sat with the Avengers around their meeting table later. Clint and Natasha sat on either side of her in a silent show of support; Bruce was remaining neutral, and Tony, Sam and Steve she suspected were all for throwing Rumlow off the top of the Tower and seeing if he bounced. Well, perhaps not Steve. Sam at least had good cause. Rumlow had kicked his ass and damn nearly killed him in the Triskelion.

Barnes was the wild card, sitting studying his hands and listening as Bruce spoke, detailing Rumlow's utterly confused mental state, and then they all argued over what to do with him. His blue eyes met Maria's once, and she thought she saw sympathy there. Finally, when they'd all fallen silent, at an impasse, the former Winter Soldier spoke up.

"I think you should talk to Coulson."

"What?" that was one option no one had suggested. "Why?" Steve asked. "I mean, yeah, Rumlow technically betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D., but Coulson has neither the time nor the capacity to hunt down all those who did. Crossbones has been more of a pain in our ass than his, too."

"Not for that reason," Barnes shook his head. "Coulson has a memory restoration machine. He offered me the opportunity to use it, but apparently it's extremely unpleasant – and my brain is slowly repairing itself on its own, thanks to me receiving the serum first. But if what you believe is true and Rumlow was brainwashed _before_ the serum, he won't get better on his own. Coulson's memory machine might get him back to who he was before – if you want him back." He looked at Maria again.

"It's not my decision," Maria said a bit weakly.

"I think it should be," Clint said unexpectedly. "Tash and I looked into the old S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel files. Rumlow didn't have any listed next of kin – but he had your name down on the _Contact In Case Of Emergency_ form."

"That wasn't unusual for agents without family, I was the Deputy Director…" Maria argued.

Clint and Natasha both stared at her. She trailed off and dropped her eyes to the table.

Steve sighed. "All right. What am I missing?"

There was complete silence in the room for a few moments, and then Maria admitted; "Rumlow and I were, uh, quite close before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell."

"You were banging him," Tony immediately concluded.

Maria winced, and Steve's eyes widened. "Good God, really?"

"Don't be crude, Tony," Natasha saved Maria's blushes. "Yes, Steve, Maria and Rumlow had a _relationship_," she told the shocked Captain.

Steve was the one blushing. "I see. Wouldn't that mean your judgement is rather – _compromised_ in the matter?" he asked after a moment.

"No more than yours was when you dragged me off on a wild goose chase after the man who almost killed you," Sam said, not unkindly, inclining his head at Barnes, who almost-smiled.

Steve sucked in a sharp breath, then smiled awkwardly. "I guess I deserved that. I'm sorry, Maria, that was uncalled for."

They were all looking at her. Waiting for her to make the call. In the end she sucked in a deep breath, nodded and said "I guess I'll call Coulson."

Coulson fell all over himself agreeing. "Rumlow was a disaster. He came to Fury about a year before it all went down, told him the HYDRA were trying to recruit him and he suspected they'd already infiltrated the STRIKE team. They both suspected Rumlow would be killed and Rollins put in his place, so Fury ordered him to become a double agent. Only at some point, and we're really not exactly sure when, they brainwashed him into compliance. Told him to keep playing at being Fury's inside man, only he was passing over false information. I've never seen Fury so angry as when he realised what they'd done."

"If only I'd worked it out," Maria muttered, kicking herself even more as she watched Clint and Bruce manoeuvre a heavily sedated Rumlow into the memory machine, locking his wrists down with the same type of electromagnetic cuffs he'd once almost captured Captain America with.

"Don't do that to yourself, Maria. HYDRA were ready to move. Using Rumlow just means they got that much closer to pulling off Project Insight. And that we were able to root out _all_ the traitors within S.H.I.E.L.D."

She looked around at what S.H.I.E.L.D. was reduced to and wanted to weep. But then she met Coulson's eyes and realised he was right; the old organisation was corrupt from the core. It had to be torn down before it could be built anew.

The young scientist on Coulson's team – Simmons, Maria thought her name was – was standing at the machine's control panel, biting her lip nervously. Clint moved over and said something – something flirtatious to try and put her at ease, no doubt, because the girl laughed and blushed, giving Barton a shy look from under her lashes.

"We're ready," Bruce said then, inserting a needle into Rumlow's arm and depressing the plunger. "He'll be awake any moment, so when you're ready, Dr. Simmons."

Maria backed away as the machine hummed to life and Rumlow's eyes opened. She had to come – had to see if it was really Brock, _her_ Brock, somewhere buried in the blank-eyed man who called himself Crossbones and waited passively for orders. But every time he laid eyes on her, he went into convulsions again, so she had to stay out of his sight and wait. Pray. Fists clenched tightly, she squeezed her eyes shut as the first screams sounded.

"Maria, you should go." It was Agent May who tried to take her out of there, and from the compassion in her eyes, Maria knew that Natasha had probably told May the truth.

"I can't," she told her friend. "If he can suffer through it, I can bear to hear it. It's my fault. I should have seen it…" She was huddled in the corner of the room by now, her nails cutting bloody crescents into her palms – but she wouldn't go. She _would not_ go, would not leave Brock to his agony. _My fault. It's my fault._

"It's like there's a core of something he's hiding, protecting," Coulson said to Bruce despairingly. "That he's been hiding from the beginning, locked away even before they brainwashed him…"

Bruce looked up, met Clint's eyes where Clint was trying to comfort Dr Simmons, the young woman clearly terribly distressed by Rumlow's screams of agony.

"Maria," Clint and Bruce both said in unison, and Rumlow's body jerked, fighting his restraints.

"_No_!" he howled. "No, you can't have her, you don't TOUCH her!" His whole body tensed, muscles bulging, and the massive electromagnets actually squeaked as he dragged them across the steel surface of the table beneath him. The steel was _buckling_, Maria realised in horror. "_MARIA_!" it was a bull-throated roar of her name and she ran to him instinctively, leaping deftly up onto the table to straddle his body, reaching to put her hands on his stubbled cheeks.

"Brock, I'm here! I'm here!"

"No!" he screamed, his eyes wide open, clearly seeing her, but he was also just as obviously lost in his own head. "God, Maria _no_, get away from here, please, please, not her, don't hurt her, I'll do what you ask…"

Dimly, Maria could hear Bruce shouting something, triumphant, as the machines monitoring Brock's brain waves beeped crazily. Could feel Phil dragging at her arm, trying to pull her off Brock. But all she could see were his eyes, _his_ eyes, deep dark brown, staring at her, _knowing_ her.

"Maria," he said her name softly, and she realised that the lights on the memory machine had gone out. It was over.

"Brock?" she whispered.

"Are you real? I saw you so many times – they said they'd taken you, I saw them torture you…"

_Was that how they'd broken him, finally?_ she couldn't help but wonder. Brock Rumlow would have been a very difficult subject to break.

"I'm real," she said softly. "I'm here. Free, not captured. No one's going to hurt either of us." She heard a dull clunking sound beside her, glanced sideways to see Clint unlocking the electromagnetic cuffs.

"What's this – thing I'm in?" Brock glanced upwards at the arc of metal and lights over his head. "Where am I?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D.," she answered the second question first. "HYDRA brainwashed you. This machine – broke it."

"No," he said, disbelievingly. "No." Then, reading the truth in her eyes, "What did I do? Maria – what did I _do_?" it was almost a cry of agony.

"Don't do that to yourself, Brock," it was Clint who spoke, quietly, seeing his old friend's eyes flick up to him and widen. "There are some things outside of our control. You said that to me after Loki, remember?"

Clint never talked about Loki. Never. Not to anyone. Maria heard Phil suck in a gasp on the other side of her, saw Clint's eyes move up and across, but then he looked at Brock again.

"You fought better than I ever did. Resisted them. You didn't give Maria up, did you? You never told them about her. If you had, they'd have come for her long ago, taken her to break you completely."

"I thought they had," Brock whispered, his throat hoarse from screaming. His hands slowly came up, clasped Maria's hips. "I thought they _had_ taken you…"

"Out," Clint jerked his head at Phil, at the silently watching Bruce, at May, still watching wide-eyed and shocked from across the room. Took Dr. Simmons' hand and pulled her towards the door. "They need to talk. Come on."

"I need to get out of here," was the first thing Brock said once they were alone. Maria scrambled off him, reached to help him out of the machine, was surprised when he took her hand. It was strange to look even further than usual up at him when he was on his feet. They'd stripped him to the waist to put him in the machine, he wore only a pair of black sweatpants, and he was all rippling muscle and terrible scars as he prowled around the room, looking at the medical equipment.

Brock turned back to her, to _his_ Maria, standing there by the machine with an uncertain look on her face. Everything was slowly coming back together in his mind, clicking together like pieces of a puzzle. And all he could think was that he'd _never_ been honest with her, before or after HYDRA turned him into their fucking mindless puppet.

"I love you."

"_What_?" her jaw dropped open.

"I've been in love with you from the moment you first surprised me in the training room and kicked my ass because I underestimated you."

That was _years_ before they'd started sleeping together. And it had been _one_ time; he'd never underestimated her again, and she'd never been able to match his sheer strength, not to mention that he was a pure action specialist and _supposed_ to be able to kick everybody's ass.

"I know for you it was just a chance to get a physical release with someone you trusted, and now I've trashed even that completely and you probably never want to lay eyes on me again," Brock realised he was rambling, but he no longer cared. Maria was staring at him from those huge dark blue eyes, her soft pink lips parted incredulously. "But I'm not going to die wondering and I'm not letting you walk away without telling you the truth. The only truth I have left, it seems. I love you."

She ran at him, and for a moment he wasn't sure if she was going to hit him, but instead she literally leaped at him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her long, slender legs around his waist, dragging his mouth to hers. He was very far from objecting, kissing her back hungrily.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she said between kisses, and he realised her face was wet with tears. "It's my fault. It's all my fault. If I'd told you earlier, we'd have been close, I'd have _known_ when they took you…"

"Maria," he groaned, silencing her with his mouth on hers. For long minutes they kissed, hunger and need sparking between them, and then she pulled her head back and said the words that shattered him completely.

"I love you."

He stroked her silken black hair with a shaking hand. "You _can't_. Not after everything I've done."

"That wasn't _you_. No more than it's Clint's fault, what he did when under Loki's control. We accepted that – _you_ were one of the first to accept that. This is no different."

Her eyes were so clear, so lucid, he found himself slowly beginning to believe.

"You'll forgive me if I avoid getting into any elevators with you?" He was a little surprised that Steve Rogers' first words to him, once he arrived back at the Tower, were a joke. But then Rogers did have a sense of humour; he was still trying to work out which STRIKE missions he'd been HYDRA for, but he remembered Rogers cracking a few jokes.

Sam Wilson was a bit harder to win over, but then the Falcon had never known him before. Rumlow winced as he remembered doing his best to kill Wilson as the Triskelion burned and crumbled around them. "Sorry," was about all he could offer, and Wilson shrugged, his eyes flickering to Maria.

He'd met Stark before. Bodyguarded him, and Potts. That was definitely pre-HYDRA, and he remembered actually rather liking Stark, which was probably why Stark had a perfect right to be pissed off with him. It wasn't a nice feeling when someone you thought was a friend betrayed you. Rumlow still remembered his disbelief, his rage, when he'd finally gone to Fury with his suspicions – no, his _certainty_ – that Jack Rollins was HYDRA.

"Is Rollins still around?" he asked Maria when they were finally alone – in her apartment, and he didn't miss that she'd brought him here.

"Hasn't been seen since the Triskelion, not by us. You don't know?"

He shook his head, trying to wrack his brain, but no – the last time he'd seen Rollins was in the Triskelion. "With any luck the bastard's dead. If not, I'll kill him sooner rather than later."

"Are you going to consider Rogers' suggestion?" Maria asked, watching him as he prowled around the living room of her small apartment. "Of claiming the Crossbones identity and fighting with the Avengers, making it a publicity blow against HYDRA?"

"Can't see that I'm good for anything else," Rumlow gestured down at the body he was still getting used to, scarred as it was, but bigger and stronger than he'd been before. "If Barnes can do it, so can I. HYDRA were so enraged when the Avengers flipped him back again. I'd love to see the look on that bastard Bakshi's face when he realises I'm yours again too."

They'd decided to give him a day's grace to get his head straight before Natasha began his debriefing, leaching everything he knew about HYDRA and their plans out of his head.

"You should get some rest," Maria murmured. "That's my spare room, that door…"

Rogers, the closest of them in size to Rumlow now, had given him a bag of clothes to wear. Rumlow dumped it on the floor now, turning to look at her. "That's where I'm sleeping, is it Maria?"

She froze under that dark gaze, hands fluttering nervously (nervous? She'd never been nervous in her life – except when _he_ looked at her _that_ way), unable to settle. "I thought – that is – it's been a long day – you must be tired…"

He shook his dark head. "Serum," was all he said, and she realised suddenly how foolish she was being, not to think of that. "Are _you_ tired, Maria?"

She wanted to say yes. But the truth was that there was a fiery pit of excitement curling in her belly, making her knees shake, her heart beat faster. She wondered if he knew. If he could hear her heartbeat, like Steve could hear heartbeats of enemies trying to hide from him.

"Maria?" he moved towards her, all lethal grace, moving deliberately slowly so that she could evade him if she wished it. "Is it the scars?"

"What?" that shocked her out of her half-aroused, half-terrified trance.

"The scars." He lifted his right hand, traced his fingers over the roughened white skin on his face, down his neck, brushed over the scarred forearm emerging from the sleeve of the shirt Coulson had found him. "I'm not the pretty boy I used to be…"

"Brock!" she half-laughed at his description. "You were never a _pretty boy_. A man – very much a man – one I could never stop looking at – I still can't." He was directly in front of her now, and she lifted a hand to his face, touched the burn scar on his cheek very lightly. The light in the room was low, the handsome, unmarked side of his face in shadow, only the burned part visible.

"A mark of my shame," Brock said, his voice low. "My failure. "

"_No_," she moved closer to him, cupping his jaw, keeping it still so he looked into her eyes. "No, Brock, don't do that to yourself. It wasn't your fault. HYDRA do this, they take and twist, they destroy and burn and _use_, make people into weapons against their will – your scars are no more a mark of failure than Barnes' are. But they made a mistake, Brock, they gave you the serum, made you _stronger_, and you're going to use it against them, bring them down for good. I _believe_ in you."

"I don't deserve that," he said, his voice even raspier than its usual whisky-and-cigarettes snarl.

"Yes, you do." Her other hand landed on his chest, over his heart. "You never gave me up, did you? They couldn't break you hard enough to make you give me up."

"Never," it was a groan of remembered agony – but no. He'd given up his own soul instead. The subliminal images he'd been fed from Whitehall's machine had changed, in his tortured brain, to images of Maria being beaten, tortured, raped – but her name had never passed his lips, not even when his mind broke under the strain and he had agreed to comply if they would _just stop hurting her_.

There'd never been tenderness between them, but it was there now, in the way his hands caressed lightly over her back, in the look he was giving her. Maria swallowed, trying to get some moisture into her dry mouth, licked her lips. His eyes widened, the pupils blowing wide until there was only the faintest ring of colour surrounding all that blackness.

"I don't care about the scars," she whispered finally. "You're still Brock. I still – I still _want_ you."

"Maria," her name was almost a prayer on his lips, and then he was lifting her in strong arms. "Where's your bedroom?"

"That way," she gestured, and he carried her through, glancing around at the room, his mouth curving as he found it to his liking, simply furnished in shades of dark blue and gold. He laid her gently down on the big bed, gazing down at her for a long moment before reaching for the hem of his shirt and peeling it off.

"Have you lain here and thought of me?" he asked softly.

She winced, looked away. Realised she owed him the truth. "Cried too many nights into my pillow because I hated you for betraying me," she confessed starkly. "And then hated myself for still wanting you."

He paused, his hand on her ankle, and then he unlaced her boot and slipped it off. "I don't know what I can say," he said finally, after removing her other boot, "except that I hope you'll never cry another tear over me."

"I'll try not to." She unfastened her belt, unclipped her waistband, helped him to remove her trousers. "Do you realise we've never made love in a bed?"

Brock stilled, his hands on the buttons of her blouse. "We never called it love, either. I don't think I knew _what_ I felt until I realised that the memory of you was the only thing I had left to hold onto."

"I didn't know until I'd lost you, either," Maria admitted, reaching up to him. He was kneeling above her on the bed, barely seen, only the moonlight seeping in around the half-closed curtains illuminating the scarred side of his face. "Losing you _broke_ me, Brock. Broke my heart into little pieces and I didn't even know how to start putting them together again."

He finished unbuttoning her blouse, bent and pressed his lips to the upper slope of her breast, right over her rapidly beating heart. "Let me put you back together again, Maria. I don't know – I just have this feeling that we're going to be all right, as long as we stick together this time."

She speared shaking fingers into his dark hair, pulled him to her for a kiss. Felt the thrumming tension in his body as her breasts pressed into his chest, the thick arousal beneath his sweatpants pushing eagerly at the heated well between her thighs.

"You were always better at making me come undone than putting me back together," she whispered against his mouth.

Brock let out a low, hungry growl, nipped at her lips lightly. Felt her slight body shudder beneath his weight, her knees lifting to bracket his sides, tilting her core against him. Clad only in a few scraps of silk and lace she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and his, at last, all _his_.

"I need you." He hated the crack in his own voice, the weakness it showed; but then she'd always been his weakness – until she became his strength. "The serum, though – I don't know exactly what it's changed in me. I don't want to hurt you."

"I trust you." Deliberately she ran her fingernails down his spine, digging in hard. "And you forget. I like it when you're rough."

His spine arched, eyes closing, and then she rocked her hips, cradling his erection closer still, and he lost everything but the need to be inside her, to hear his name echoing from the walls in her throaty voice.

He ripped her bra and panties to shreds, kicked his sweatpants off, his mouth all over her in heated licks and nips, his hands seemingly everywhere his mouth wasn't until Maria was a delirious, begging mess, frantic for him.

"So beautiful," Brock murmured hoarsely, looking down at her pale body in the moonlight, spread out on the bed before him like a feast for a starving man.

"Brock," she reached out to him and he could no more deny her than he could his need to breathe, bringing his weight down on her, groaning deep in his chest as she wrapped long, lean legs around his waist. "I need you. Please."

"Yes." He'd got used to being physically bigger and more powerful in the months he'd spent as a HYDRA weapon, but he hadn't had sex since that last time in Maria's office, when he'd taken her on her own desk. He tried to be gentle, to go slowly, but Maria was having none of it, locking her legs around his hips and dragging him deep inside her with one powerful yank, when he would have filled her more gently.

_Thank God for the serum_, he would think later, because apparently the greater stamina it had endowed him with enabled him to last longer, not to fire off like some callow kid getting off for the first time. Without that he'd surely have embarrassed himself and not satisfied Maria; but as it was he was able to hold on, to drive her to thrashing, screaming heights of ecstasy beneath him before he allowed his own release with a deep roar of her name.

She clung to him when he would have moved off her afterwards, so he rested his weight on his elbows and smoothed her hair, wincing as the fine silken strands caught on his rough, callused skin. Maria didn't seem to care, though, reaching one of her own hands up to touch his stubbled jaw.

"Brock," she said softly.

"I love you," he told her, his own voice a raspy growl. "Whatever you want this to be, I'm fine with that, if you want to keep it casual, make it seem like it's just friends-with-benefits for your Avenger buddies. Just don't ask me to leave you. I – need to be close."

"I'm not letting you out of my _sight_," Maria said vehemently. "Not this time."

He smiled, leaning down to kiss her. "I'm good with that."

_Six months later_

"You must comply!" Sunil Bakshi shouted at Crossbones. "Get me out of here! You _must_ comply!"

"He's the one?" Maria leaned her head against Rumlow's shoulder, looking dispassionately at the dark-haired man being pushed into the prison van.

"One of the two. Coulson shot Whitehall in Puerto Rico."

"Take him, then," Maria told General Talbot. "He's an enemy combatant. Find the deepest, darkest hole Gitmo has and let him rot in it."

"Glad to be of service, ma'am," Talbot saluted her, nodded respectfully to Crossbones and climbed into the armoured car which would accompany the van.

"I think I might just fly cover and make sure nothing unexpected happens," Falcon muttered behind them, and leapt up into the sky as the van moved off. He and Brock had become good friends since Crossbones joined the Avengers, and Sam would take no chances with the possibility of one of Brock's arch-enemies coming back to haunt him.

Maria could tell that Brock was smiling behind his mask. His hand tightened on hers. "Come on, my love. Let's go home."

She ran her fingers down his back, across his flank. "What an excellent idea. I do love peeling you out of this suit."

"You're a wicked woman." His grip on her arm wasn't – quite – hard enough to bruise as he led her quickly towards the jet waiting to take them back to the Tower. "I love it."

**Incidentally, not long before I finished this fic off, I was watching the Avengers Assemble cartoon with my kids and there was an episode featuring Crossbones (who is, of course, a bad guy). What cracked me up is how, um, **_**shapely**_** his 'package' was in his suit – particularly compared to all the usual characters who are fairly sexless in that regard. Google Avengers Assemble Crossbones and click Images if you don't believe me.**

**See? And now feel disgusted with yourself for giggling smuttily over a cartoon character's crotch…**

**I hope you enjoyed at least one of these alternate endings to **_**Her Dirty Little Secret**_**. Would love to hear which one you liked best, if you managed to make your way through all four of them – and if you aren't thoroughly disgusted with me for coming up with the premise for **_**Only Mine**_**!**


End file.
